


Waking up like from a dream

by liliaeth



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, References to Homophobia, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 16:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/pseuds/liliaeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren's feelings as he recovers in the PDS treatment center</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking up like from a dream

**Author's Note:**

> My beta the-lady-grinning-soul is the one who helped me bring some life to this, all credit to her for that.

Kieren, slumped against the back of a flimsy plastic chair, trembled in terror as nightmares raged behind fluttering eyelids. He unclasped his eyes, shivering beneath the cold, calculating gaze of the calm, stoic doctor before him. The man was garbed in a pristine lab coat, the stubble shrouding his stocky, rosy cheeks almost comforting, an oddly human aspect Kieren sorely missed. Kieren had seen him before, had been seeing him for the past few… he wasn’t sure just how long, but he knew he had. Only now he could feel his being coursing through his veins, and he remembered. He remembered a woman. Young, dark skinned, with playful ebony curls, crawling franticly, sobbing and wailing with hollow, desperate screams, from a pale, shuffling girl in a sanguine floral dress. Ebony bile oozed from the bony, moaning girl's grinning lips, ravenous yellow eyes wide with ecstatic glee. A gun fired, once, twice, as the woman shrieked, unintelligibly begging for her life, dark blood spraying behind. The woman hadn’t seen him. And Kieren yelled as he could feel himself devouring her tender, sweet flesh. He opened his eyes, and the doctor fixed a scrutinizing, beady blue eye on his shuddering form. Kieren trembled desperately, his hands tensing, writhing, restraining him from his wild rampage, sweaty palms pressed uncomfortably to the back of the plastic chair. “I killed her.” He breathily affirmed in disbelief. Disbelief and shame. 

“Did you say something?” The doctor came closer, and Kieren snapped his empty glare to the polished white floor, guilt wracking his every being. “I killed her, I killed that woman…” An empty, dark void spurted forth in an unending, unadulterated torrent of self accusation, self hatred, self pity. The doctor came closer, his clacking footsteps hollow and wintry. He seemed … glad.  
Kieren finally fell quiet. 

“It wasn’t your fault. You are a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer. What you did in your untreated state was not your fault.”

It came out rote, as if it had been told a hundred times before. Kieren scowled, painfully aware of how cheap and forced those words felt, resounding and ringing in his ears. 

The doctor went through routine exams, while Kieren sat there, wishing to cry, but tortuously incapable of doing so. A dull, numb sensation prickled his skin, heart as heavy as lead. He remembered those final seconds of peace, of relief, his soul cleansed of the despair and pressure as he sought the warm, comforting embrace of death. He stared at his wrists. They’d been bleeding, drained and devoid of life, until the world was sapped from his sight. And then there was darkness, hunger, pain. 

The doctor quietly ordered the guards to accompany him to the recovery wing. Kieren blinked owlishly, white eyes inhumanly transfixed on the floor. He wasn't sure what was happening, and strode awkwardly in a numb daze, as if he'd been gently detached from the world. They politely pushed him into an uncomfortably white room, far too clean, far too perfect, far too bleak. Several people roamed idly about, talking with vowels and tongues that still sat awkwardly in the mouth, like sickly animated corpses. Their grotesque, gnarled injuries were treated, but their bodies appeared wrong. He perched on an icy metal bench, head bowed in silent, world-weary defeat. He could still feel the slippery, pungent slick of warm, salty blood, eerily dripping from his stiff fingertips, pooling in scarlet rivulets in the creased of his palm. 

Was he anything beyond a killer, beyond the blood on his wrists. Could he be anything more than the rabid monster, teeth bared in animalistic rage, buried amongst the skulls of limp, helpless bodies. Days moved on, and nobody ate, nobody drank. They only paused to stand, washing their sickly, ivory faces in sanitized water, queuing to see the doctor, sitting for hours and hours before they received their medication and stood to join another line. And every day more and more tattered shreds of his memory awoke. He reminisced of his mother; how she used to pet his fluffy locks of hair, or rub his elbow and smile, or press tender kisses to his brow. He remembered those soothing sensations; the sweet, deep scent of her perfume, the sound of her silly jokes, the feel of her reassuring embrace. He could recall his father’s huge, calloused hand on his bony shoulders as they strode in companionable silence to the football field. He remembered trying to play once. And falling. A huge, lumbering, funny-looking boy, with a goofy grin and snide sense of humor, sneered as he helped him to his feet. 

He remembered Rick. He remembered Rick’s eyes, Rick’s…

He remembered Rick’s father screaming in hot, angry fury, eyes bulging from their sockets as he clutched Kieren by the collar of his shirt, throwing him to the scratchy pavement outside, slamming his peeling white door in horror and outrage. He remembered numbly wading through the street, vision blearing with stifled tears. Kieren began to sob, the news of Rick’s death almost as fresh as the day it had arrived, the memory jeering and mocking his weak, frail state. For a moment, he wished he could return to that mindless daze.

“My name is Kieren Walker, I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, what I did in my untreated state was not my fault.” 

He didn’t believe the forced, jerky line any more now than when he'd heard it the first time around. 

He remembered his little sister; her pudgy cheeked smile, her swishing red hair, the way she would look at him with her adoring gaze, like a fierce, loyal little puppy. He missed her.  
The others were angry, some of them at least. They didn’t understand why they were here, the reason for their punishing torment. Many of them didn’t remember. They didn’t remember what they’d done, but Kieren did. They just hated being here, hated the way their bodies lacked movement, lacked life. They hated the guards, they hated…

Kieren could understand that, his own limbs often seemed to fight him as he moved. He opened the door to his cell -room, the therapist called it, and he settled down on the bleary sheets of the bed, the one closest to the door. The room was plain and empty, but the other bed held rumbled, crinkled sheets and haphazardly arranged pillows, apparently used before. 

Kieren nestled into the lumpy mattress, faces mobile behind closed eyes. Not just the beautiful, cheerful woman, but others. People screaming, blood on his hands and lips. It just wouldn’t stop. He stood up and stared at the bars instead of a door. Soldiers escorted groups of the undead, parading and staggering about in the patient's attire, identical to the one clothing his bare back. Pure white.  
He was a zombie, he was a zombie and he was in a hospital, and he’d killed people. 

“I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, what I did in my untreated state was not my fault.“

Some of the others left, they were going back home. They’d finished their treatment, finally free and released to the wild outdoors. His roommate Alex didn’t trust it, didn’t believe the doctors or the soldiers.

Kieren remembered himself. He remembered sitting idly in class, listening as he fumbled inattentively with a tiny, splintering wooden pencil. Rick would make a joke, sometimes scathing and appalling, sometimes so adorably goofy that he couldn't restrain a snicker, and Kieren would laugh. They were both screamed at for hours on end by distressed, tight-lipped teachers, but it didn’t matter. Just so long as long as Rick was there.

The others in class didn't so much hate him, as ignore him with a fervent passion. They loved Rick, but then again, almost everyone had a tendency to love Rick, no matter how much of a prat he could be. Rick didn’t mind that Kieren would doodle and sketch on the side of the playground whilst the others played. He would just stare in delight and wonder, raking his sparkling blue eyes on the sketches that Kieren rendered and fashioned before him. 

“Wow, Ren, you’re amazing.” It brought a foolish grin to his face. Only Rick called him Ren, a name that somehow rung like 'home' to his ears.  
Rick was dead, Kieren was dead. And he’d killed people. 

“I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer, what I did in my untreated state was not my fault.”

Alex claimed that what they did to the living didn’t matter. They were more than that; a new race, more advanced, superior. Kieren could feel the quivering fear behind Alex’ words as his roommate uttered each syllable. Even as Kieren humbly disagreed. The flashbacks grew worse even as his memories grew better. 

Every morning under the sheets he imagined the silk lining of his coffin, crawling his rotting body from the grave. But even those memories weren’t as bad as those of the girl, of killing her, of looking up at the other dead and seeing himself in her, the blood and flesh on her lips.

“I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer, and what I-what I d-did in my untreated state was not my fault.”

He wasn’t ready, wasn’t ready to go home, to see Mom and Dad, to see Jem, he wasn’t ready to explain, he didn’t feel ready. But that’s why they said he was ready, because he feels. 

"I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault."


End file.
